Electric discharge gas lasers are well known and have been available since soon after lasers were invented in the 1960s. A high voltage discharge between two electrodes excites a laser gas to produce a gaseous gain medium. A resonance cavity containing the gain medium permits stimulated amplification of light which is then extracted from the cavity in the form of a laser beam. Many of these electric discharge gas lasers are operated in a pulse mode.
Excimer lasers are a particular type of electric discharge gas laser and they have been known since the mid 1970s. A description of an excimer laser, useful for integrated circuit lithography, is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,023,884 issued Jun. 11, 1991 entitled xe2x80x9cCompact Excimer Laser.xe2x80x9d This patent has been assigned to Applicants"" employer, and the patent is hereby incorporated herein by reference. The excimer laser described in Patent ""884 is a high repetition rate pulse laser.
These excimer lasers, when used for integrated circuit lithography, are typically operated in an integrated circuit fabrication line xe2x80x9caround-the-clockxe2x80x9d producing many thousands of valuable integrated circuits per hour; therefore, down-time can be very expensive. For this reason most of the components are organized into modules which can be replaced within a few minutes. Excimer lasers used for lithography typically must have its output beam reduced in bandwidth to a fraction of a picometer. This xe2x80x9cline-narrowingxe2x80x9d is typically accomplished in a line narrowing module (called a xe2x80x9cline narrowing packagexe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cLNPxe2x80x9d) which forms the back of the laser""s resonant cavity. This LNP is comprised of delicate optical elements including prisms, mirrors and a grating. Electric discharge gas lasers of the type described in Patent ""884 utilize an electric pulse power system to produce the electrical discharges, between the two electrodes. In such prior art systems, a direct current power supply charges a capacitor bank called xe2x80x9cthe charging capacitorxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cC0xe2x80x9d to a predetermined and controlled voltage called the xe2x80x9ccharging voltagexe2x80x9d for each pulse. The magnitude of this charging voltage may be in the range of about 500 to 1000 volts in these prior art units. After C0 has been charged to the predetermined voltage, a solid state switch is closed allowing the electrical energy stored on C0 to ring very quickly through a series of magnetic compression circuits and a voltage transformer to produce high voltage electrical potential in the range of about 16,000 volts (or greater) across the electrodes which produce the discharges which lasts about 20 to 50 ns.
Excimer lasers such as described in the ""884 patent have during the period 1989 to 2001 become the primary light source for integrated circuit lithography. More than 1000 of these lasers are currently in use in the most modern integrated circuit fabrication plants. Almost all of these lasers have the basic design features described in the ""884 patent.
This is:
(1) a single, pulse power system for providing electrical pulses across the electrodes at pulse rates of about 100 to 2500 pulses per second;
(2) a single resonant cavity comprised of a partially reflecting mirror-type output coupler and a line narrowing unit consisting of a prism beam expander, a tuning mirror and a grating;
(3) a single discharge chamber containing a laser gas (either KrF or ArF), two elongated electrodes and a tangential fan for circulating the laser gas between the two electrodes fast enough to clear the discharge region between pulses, and
(4) a beam monitor for monitoring pulse energy, wavelength and bandwidth of output pulses with a feedback control system for controlling pulse energy, energy dose and wavelength on a pulse-to-pulse basis.
During the 1989-2001 period, output power of these lasers has increased gradually and beam quality specifications for pulse energy stability, wavelength stability and bandwidth have also become increasingly tighter. Operating parameters for a popular lithography laser model used widely in integrated circuit fabrication include pulse energy at 8 mJ, pulse rate at 2,500 pulses per second (providing an average beam power of up to about 20 watts), bandwidth at about 0.5 pm (FWHM) and pulse energy stability at +/xe2x88x920.35%.
There is a need for further improvements in these beam parameters. Integrated circuit fabricators desire better control over wavelength, bandwidth, higher beam power with more precise control over pulse energy. Some improvements can be provided with the basic design as described in the ""884 patent; however, major improvements with that basic design may not be feasible. For example, with a single discharge chamber precise control of pulse energy may adversely affect wavelength and/or bandwidth and vice versa especially at very high pulse repetition rates.
A well-known technique for reducing the band-width of gas discharge laser systems (including excimer laser systems) involves the injection of a narrow band xe2x80x9cseedxe2x80x9d beam into a gain medium. In one such system, a laser producing the seed beam called a xe2x80x9cmaster oscillatorxe2x80x9d is designed to provide a very narrow bandwidth beam in a first gain medium, and that beam is used as a seed beam in a second gain medium. If the second gain medium functions as a power amplifier, the system is referred to as a master oscillator, power amplifier (MOPA) system. If the second gain medium itself has a resonance cavity (in which laser oscillations take place), the system is referred to as an injection seeded oscillator (ISO) system or a master oscillator, power oscillator (MOPO) system in which case the seed laser is called the master oscillator and the downstream system is called the power oscillator. Laser systems comprised of two separate systems tend to be substantially more expensive, larger and more complicated than comparable single chamber laser systems. Therefore, commercial application of these two chamber laser systems has been limited.
What is needed is a better laser design for a pulse gas discharge laser for operation at repetition rates in the range of about 4,000 pulses per second or greater, permitting precise control of all beam quality parameters including wavelength, bandwidth and pulse energy.
The present invention provides an injection seeded modular gas discharge laser system capable of producing high quality pulsed laser beams at pulse rates of about 4,000 Hz or greater and at pulse energies of about 5 to 10 mJ or greater for integrated outputs of about 20 to 40 Watts or greater. Two separate discharge chambers are provided, one of which is a part of a master oscillator producing a very narrow band seed beam which is amplified in the second discharge chamber. The chambers can be controlled separately permitting optimization of wavelength parameters in the master oscillator and optimization of pulse energy parameters in the amplifying chamber. A preferred embodiment is an ArF excimer laser system configured as a MOPA and specifically designed for use as a light source for integrated circuit lithography. In this preferred embodiment, both of the chambers and the laser optics are mounted on a vertical optical table within a laser enclosure. In the preferred MOPA embodiment, each chamber comprises a single tangential fan providing sufficient gas flow to permit operation at pulse rates of 4000 Hz or greater by clearing debris from the discharge region in less time than the approximately 0.25 milliseconds between pulses. The master oscillator is equipped with a line narrowing package having a very fast tuning mirror capable of controlling centerline wavelength on a pulse-to-pulse basis at repetition rates of 4000 Hz or greater and providing a bandwidth of less than 0.2 pm (FWHM). This preferred embodiment also includes a pulse multiplying module dividing each pulse from the power amplifier into either two or four pulses in order to reduce substantially deterioration rates of lithography optics. Other preferred embodiments are configured as KrF or F2 MOPA laser systems. Preferred embodiments of this invention utilize a xe2x80x9cthree wavelength platformxe2x80x9d. This includes an enclosure optics table and general equipment layout that is the same for each of the three types of discharge laser systems expected to be in substantial use for integrated circuit fabrication during the early part of the 21st century, i.e., KrF, ArF, and F2 lasers.